Vettel dismisses idea of Ferrari sabotage
Vettel rules out early Ferrari exit, won't 'run away'
Sebastian Vettel has said he won’t accuse anyone of “bad intentions” after a very difficult British Grand Prix weekend.
The four-time World Champion, who is leaving the Scuderia at the end of the 2020 season, has had a woeful weekend at Silverstone ahead of Sunday’s race.
His FP1 session ended after just three laps because of an intercooler issue, while loose brake pedals and other parts rattling around the cockpit blighted his other free practice outings. Vettel was spotted on numerous occasions trying to locate and fix the loose parts himself.
The doom and gloom continued in qualifying for Vettel as he saw his best lap time deleted for exceeding track limits, meaning he was nearly a second down on his Ferrari team-mate Charles Leclerc in Q3 and will line up from P10 on Sunday’s grid.
After qualifying, Red Bull’s motorsport advisor Dr Helmut Marko was suspicious of Ferrari’s pace considering how close Leclerc was to lining up from P3 ahead of Max Verstappen (just 0.012s).
Head on over to the Formula 1 store for all your official Sebastian Vettel merchandise
“It is a mystery to us where Leclerc got the speed from,” Marko said via Auto Bild.
“He was faster on the straights than us. However, it seems to have been only with him, not with Vettel.”
Vettel, though, when asked about the contrasting fortunes on either side of the Ferrari garage, would not point the finger at anyone.
“I don’t want to accuse anyone of bad intentions. On my side, things didn’t go ideally in qualifying either,” Vettel said.
He added to Channel 4: “Nevertheless, I’ll try everything I can and see what we can do.
“Looking ahead, obviously starting on the soft is not ideal but it is what it is, so we have to try and make the most of it.
“I am relatively confident that the race will be better.
“How much I don’t know. I can’t promise anything, but it can’t get much worse. I think it’s probably more me just making sure everything comes together.
“So not a good session, but let’s see what we can do.”
Follow all the action from the British Grand Prix with the PlanetF1 live centre
